Slurry hydroconversion provides a method for conversion of high boiling, low value petroleum fractions into higher value liquid products. Slurry hydroconversion technology can process difficult feeds, such as feeds with high Conradson carbon residue (CCR), while still maintaining high liquid yields. In addition to resid feeds, slurry hydroconversion units have been used to process other challenging streams present in refinery/petrochemical complexes such as deasphalted rock, steam cracked tar, and visbreaker tar. Unfortunately, slurry hydroconversion is also an expensive refinery process from both a capital investment standpoint and a hydrogen consumption standpoint.
Various slurry hydroconversion configurations have previously been described. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,755,955 and U.S. Patent Application Publication 2010/0122939 provide examples of configurations for performing slurry hydroconversion. U.S. Patent Application Publication 2011/0210045 also describes examples of configurations for slurry hydroconversion, including examples of configurations where the heavy oil feed is diluted with a stream having a lower boiling point range, such as a vacuum gas oil stream and/or catalytic cracking slurry oil stream, and examples of configurations where a bottoms portion of the product from slurry hydroconversion is recycled to the slurry hydroconversion reactor.
U.S. Patent Application Publication 2013/0075303 describes a reaction system for combining slurry hydroconversion with a coking process. An unconverted portion of the feed after slurry hydroconversion is passed into a coker for further processing. The resulting coke is described as being high in metals. This coke can be combusted to allow for recovery of the metals or in a suitable disposal process. The recovered metals are described as being suitable for forming a catalytic solution for use as a catalyst in the slurry hydroconversion process.
U.S. Patent Application Publication 2013/0112593 describes a reaction system for performing slurry hydroconversion on a deasphalted heavy oil feed. The asphalt from a deasphalting process and a portion of the unconverted material from the slurry hydroconversion can be gasified to form hydrogen and carbon oxides.